I Still Remember
by dawneh
Summary: Life...love...loss We experience them all... John Paul/Craig fic


I can still remember sitting by his hospital bed. Watching him fade away until there was very little left of the man I once knew, once loved. Each day took another part of him from me, and each day I had to prepare myself for the time when he would be no more.

We'd had a life together, a good life, but it wasn't a long life. I needed more, I deserved more. But I wasn't going to get it. God or fate or whatever it is that decides these things marked off our ten years together and then called time.

When you're young ten years feel like an eternity, an unfathomable length of time in which the whole of creation can change. But when you look back ten years is nothing, gone in the blink of an eye, leaving only memories and regrets. Hopefully good memories and few regrets and thankfully I have both of those.

I was holding his hand that last morning. The sun was so bright, shining through the window of his room, illuminating the fragility of his weakened body. In so many ways I felt cheated by the weather that day. What right did the sun have to shine on a day that took my love from me? Where were the storm clouds, where was the thunder and lightening to mark his passing? How could this day be like any other when it was the end of all things?

His skin felt like tissue paper as the illness that claimed him eventually sapped all life and strength from the man who had once hoisted me onto his shoulder before throwing me down on the bed.

I held his hand gently as the final spark of life in his eyes faded into darkness. The last thing that I told him was how much I loved him but I'm not sure if he heard me, or if his soul had already departed as his mortal shell took its last breath and then was still.

I don't know how long I sat in that room before I found the strength to leave him.

The memories of our life tumbled through my head like a slide show, revealing the good times and the bad, making me laugh and cry in equal measure until there were no more memories to be recalled and our life together came to an end.

The congregation looked at me with silent contemplation as I talked of my love. The tears that tumbled down my cheeks were silent; my grief was a private thing that I held locked in my chest, something that I couldn't share, not with any of them, not really.

He had been my life and now he was gone. How do you ever make anybody understand that?

My voice rang out strong and clear as I read the poem I had chosen, the words that said how I felt more than my own ever could…

He was my North, my South, my East and West,  
My working week and my Sunday rest,  
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;  
I thought that love would last for ever; I was wrong.

I stood for a moment listening to the sounds of pain that filled the church. His family, his friends, everyone who had ever loved him came together to say our final goodbyes. But we weren't the only people in the church that day.

Just before I moved away from the front of the church I caught sight of a familiar figure. A face that I hadn't seen in almost fifteen years and yet recognised in an instant.

Two soft chocolate eyes looked at me with sympathy and understanding and it was then that I appreciated something Craig Dean had tried to explain to me many years before.

I loved Philip from the day we met until the day he died.

I loved Craig Dean from the day we met… and I still do.

He had been right all along. It is possible to love two people at the same time.

---

After the service I stood outside the church as face after nameless face passed me by, stopping to offer their meaningless platitudes and sentiments of condolence. Maybe I'm being unfair, these people were his friends, our friends, but their words still washed over me in a cascade of sounds that did not seem to have any bearing on my world.

As I shook a variety of hands my eyes constantly searched the crowd, seeking out the face that had no reason to be there and yet was. The more I looked for him the more guilty I began to feel. At the funeral of the man I had planned to spend my life with my thoughts should not have been filled with the boy who left my life fifteen years earlier.

I tried to clear my mind and concentrate on what was being said to me but the words flowed through me without registering in my brain.

And then he was stood behind me.

I knew it instantly, as I had known all those years before whenever he entered a room. I never needed to see him to know he was there; somehow the knowledge of him would register within my body in a way that I had never known before, or since.

I could feel his presence as deeply as if his arms were around me. I was suddenly torn. Part of me wanted to run and not confront the confusion that his appearance had reared in me, but a larger part wanted to embrace him and recapture the friend that I had lost so long ago.

I consider walking away at that moment. I could pretend not to know he's there. He is making no effort to announce his presence but rather I feel that he is allowing me the choice, the decision to speak with him or not is all mine.

I still have to wonder how he is here, WHY he is here. Since the day Craig Dean left Hollyoaks village for Dublin he never once returned and I never learned where he had gone or what he was doing.

Me? I never got further than Chester. My dreams of a successful Uni degree crumbled around my ears less than one year into my studies when frightening family dramas took precedence over any thoughts of my education.

Falling into a job at an old run-down record store in the centre of Chester was how I met Philip, and in time I convinced myself that leaving uni was fate and meeting Philip was my destiny.

I loved Philip. I really did. That may be hard to believe when all of my thoughts are suddenly consumed with Craig but Philip was a rock that grounded me and helped give me direction. Our love grew slowly but it grew strong. It wasn't the all-consuming passion of my youth but it was still love. Love can come in many different forms. My love for Philip was one and my love for Craig had been another. I wouldn't say that I ever loved one more, I just loved them differently and why wouldn't I when they were such different people.

Finally I turn around. I have to. As much as I want to and don't want to it's as if the choice is taken from me as my body moves to face him.

He doesn't seem to have changed. How can that be after fifteen years? How can I look at this man and still see the eighteen-year-old boy? Maybe it's because my gaze travels no further than his eyes. So deep and dark, holding onto their mysteries just like they always did, two pools of liquid chocolate framed by long thick lashes that fan across his cheeks as he blinks.

"I'm so sorry John Paul."

The first words Craig Dean has spoken to me in all those years and they break me.

The grief and loss that I had held inside, the pain and tears that I had managed to keep to myself, to keep private, now pour from me.

So many people had said those very same words to me, day in, day out since Philip's death but it takes hearing them from Craig to realise what they mean. I spent many months losing Philip a little more each day that in the end it was almost a relief to see him go. He had become so much less than the man he had been and it broke my heart to see him so reduced. But it wasn't until I heard the words of sympathy from Craig that I finally admit Philip has gone.

I want to thank Craig for coming, to ask him how and why, but I have no ability to speak as my sobs shake my body with grief.

For so long after Craig left Hollyoaks I dreamt of seeing him again and of holding him again. How ironic it is that the next time I find myself in his arms it's when he is comforting me over the loss of another.

It's a relief to finally let myself weep, to unburden the anguish that had been raging inside for days and the familiar warmth of Craig's arms helps so slowly ease my sobs and dry my tears.

"Craig what are you doing here?" I ask when I finally regain my composure and step out of his embrace.

"I heard what happened and I… I just wanted to see you… to tell you how sorry I am." Craig smiles, that small gentle smile he always used when he wasn't certain if he had done the right thing and, right on cue, his hand reaches to the back of his neck in that old nervous habit of his.

"Hey John Paul, we'll see you back at the pub?"

My attention is dragged from Craig as a couple of friends address me and I have to turn to speak to them.

By the time I turn back Craig Dean is walking away. I consider calling him back but I don't. I just stand and watch as he vanishes from my life as suddenly as he re-entered it.

I can still remember the day I saw Craig Dean again. He arrived unexpectedly just when I needed someone to remind me how to feel and to let me feel again, even if what I had to feel was such pain and loss.

He walked back into my world when I needed him the most and then was gone.

I don't know where he came from or where he went but I know he's out there and I know, with a total certainty, that I'll see him again. When I'm ready. When we're both ready.


End file.
